What causes pancreatic cancer?
-Anything that increases your chance of getting a disease is called a risk factor.
-Having a risk factor does not mean that you will get cancer; not having risk factors doesn’t mean that you will not get cancer.
Pancreatic cancer risk factors
Risk factors for pancreatic cancer include the following:
-Smoking
-Diabetes
-Pancreatitis
-Diet, physical inactivity, obesity
-Family history
- The risk of developing pancreatic cancer is usually low before the age of 40 with most people being diagnosed between their sixties and eighties.
-Pancreatic cancer occurs more commonly in men than in women (1.5:1).
-Recent data however suggests that relative risk in women is approaching that seen in men, probably due to the increased use of tobacco by females.
-HPV can infect cells on the surface of the skin, genitals, anus, mouth and throat, but not the blood or most internal organs such as the heart or lungs.
-Infection with HPV is common, and in most people the body is able to clear the infection on its own.
-Sometimes, however, the infection does not go away and becomes chronic.
-Chronic infection, especially when it is caused by certain high-risk HPV types, can eventually cause certain cancers, such as cervical cancer.
-Although HPV can be spread during sex including vaginal intercourse, anal intercourse and oral sex, sex doesn't have to occur for the infection to spread. All that is needed to pass HPV from one person to another is skin-to-skin contact with an area of the body infected with HPV.
-Smoking tobacco is the most important risk factor for pancreatic cancer.
-People who smoke tobacco are more likely than nonsmokers to develop this disease.
-Heavy smokers are most at risk.
-Diabetes has also been linked to pancreatic cancer.
-Diabetes appears to be both a symptom of pancreatic cancer, and long-standing adult-onset diabetes may also increase the risk of developing pancreatic cancer.
-Long-term inflammation of the pancreas (pancreatitis) has been linked to cancer of the pancreas.
-Hereditary pancreatitis may have a higher lifetime risk for developing pancreatic cancer
Diets high in meat, cholesterol, fried foods and nitrosamines may increase the risk of pancreatic cancer.
Recent research has suggested obesity and physical inactivity as additional risk factors.
-Some studies have seen a higher risk of cervical cancer in women whose blood test results show evidence of past or current chlamydia infection (compared with women who have normal test results).
-Infection with chlamydia often causes no symptoms in women. A woman may not know that she is infected at all unless she is tested for chlamydia when she gets her pelvic exam.
Up to 10% of patients with pancreatic cancer have one or more first- or second-degree relatives with the disease.
Environmental factors substantially increase the risk of pancreatic cancer.
Occupational exposure to carcinogens (e.g. asbestos, pesticides, dyes and petrochemicals) has been associated with pancreatic cancers.
The incidence risk due to industrial chemical exposure is 3 to 5 fold more.
Patients who have had a portion of their stomach removed for some ailment (i.e. partial gastrectomy) appear to have an increased risk for developing pancreatic cancer
Young age at the first full-term pregnancy
-Women who were younger than 17 years when they had their first full-term pregnancy are almost 2 times more likely to get cervical cancer later in life than women who waited to get pregnant until they were 25 years or older.
Family history of cervical cancer
-Cervical cancer may run in some families.
-If your mother or sister had cervical cancer, your chances of developing the disease are 2 to 3 times higher than if no one in the family had it.
-Some researchers suspect that some instances of this familial tendency are caused by an inherited condition that makes some women less able to fight off HPV infection than others.
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